Unsure of my own beliefs

Not sure how to approach this topic. It has been something that has been rattling around in my head for quite a while now. Hopefully this will be coherent, but it will basically be a brain dump of my thoughts. This is something I’ve not talked to anyone about so I’m really just trying to get my thoughts straight.

Usually its Sundays that it has been on my mind. Maybe because that is the one day a week that I really think and pay attention to religion. Sitting in church questioning myself, do I really believe what I’m listening to being preached?

If I really believed wouldn’t I be doing more about it than just attending church once a week? Being a true Christian you dedicate your life to Jesus, you work to build disciples and bring more people to Christ. Seeing as this is the first time I’ve talked about my faith, or lack there of,  publicly for sometime that doesn’t make me a very good Christian. But I don’t think this is unique to me. I would say the majority of people who call themselves Christians are like me. Attend church once a week and that is it.

That isn’t everyone though. I personally know a number of people who I’m confident fully believe and live the teachings of the Bible. Honestly, I admire that they believe in something that much and dedicate their lives to it.

Maybe I’m jaded from growing up in the Mormon church. The founder of that church, Joseph Smith, started a religion which has grown to over 15 million members across the world, according to their website. They consider themselves Christian but I believe most other Christian religions would argue this. Unless you are one of the members of this church I think most people would also agree that Joseph Smith was a just a man who took it upon himself to start a new Religion and wasn’t directed by God. This was in fairly modern times that this started when, I would think, it would be a lot harder to start a religion than when Jesus did. If he could do this than why couldn’t Jesus have done something similar in his time?

There are many good aspects of Religion and Christianity. The community it builds and the the kindness that is genuinely shown. These things can also be found elsewhere of course, but Church is an easy well known establishment that makes it easy to find if you are looking for it.

Some of the ideas of Christianity are very nice to believe in. I would much rather think that I could have an after life than everything just be over when I die. Even if this is the case than the work I’m putting into it isn’t going to get me there, and at least currently, my faith isn’t strong enough to get me to want to put in that work.

This is hard for me. There are many people who in many ways I consider much smarter than myself who do believe. Am I not smart enough to see the truth? Maybe it’s because I haven’t put in the work to really study the Bible. It’s hard to want to put in that effort for something you’re not sure on.

So why do I bother going to Church most Sundays? I’ve even volunteered helping out on Sundays and my wife still does. The main reason is my wife and Kids enjoy it. I mentioned the community aspect earlier and the values they teach aren’t going to be a bad thing for my children to learn. The church we attend has a great worship team and I really enjoy the music.

I consider myself to be open minded and as I’m concerned people can believe what ever they like. As long as they are happy than the more power to them. I’m also not ready to choose sides and say I’m an atheist or that I for sure believe in Jesus. What about all the other religions out there that I know next to nothing about? What if one of them are true and I really haven’t been exposed to them yet.

It could be that I’m just an overly privileged person that has too much pride to admit that I didn’t get to this point in my life with out Jesus. There has certainly been a lot of help along the way and many of these people have been Christians. Maybe they were put in my life by Jesus.